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(Photo: WhiteHouse.gov)

By Shepard Ambellas

In what some have called the “Obamacare of Education”, Common Core is not only illegal in Texas, it’s a failure.

KATY, TX (INTELLIHUB) — Back in June, Gov. Rick Perry (R), Texas, effectively signed HB462, banning the practice of CSOPE/Common Core in the Texas educational system, but now one local mom is speaking out.

Local resident, mother and activist, Laurie McFarling has been raising awareness about the globalized indoctrination programs for some time, in an all-out push to end the sponsored madness spewed forth by globalist entities such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Council of Governors and others such as Bill Ratliff, Microsoft lobbyist and a member of the Texas Board of Education. The fight has not been easy by any means and in many respects is being fought entirely on a local level.

McFarling has recently joined forces with other concerned moms on Facebook, Texas Against Common Core, who are now actively scouring all local Texas independent school systems for evidence of related illegal conduct which some feel is Hitlerian in nature. ”Most of us who lived through this Hitler era remember how British Prime Minister Chamberlain gushed how great Hitler’s Youth Corps was, much like those who support Common Core today”, Donald Conkey of the Cherokee Tribune wrote.

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Credit: KHOU 11 NEWS
Ugo Iyebu, 28, is accused of a rampage that cost up to $200,000 in damage at Galleria-area businesses.

by Rekha Muddaraj

HOUSTON – Surveillance cameras were rolling when a man went on a naked weekend rampage in the Galleria area.

Ugo Iyebu, 28, first trashed the inside of the Shell station on Westheimer near 610, according to police.

A clerk said Iyebu was enraged because he refused to turn on a pump without payment. Video shows the suspect pushing a computer and cash register off the counter, ripping out the coffee machine and scattering products to the floor.

Before leaving the station, he retrieved a gun from his vehicle and smashed out the rear window of a car near the gas pumps. The driver of that car quickly sped away.

Authorities say Iyebu continued his rampage across the street at Luxury Car Rentals.

He stripped off his clothes and bashed a bunch of expensive cars, including a Lamborghini. An employee said Iyebu caused $100,000 to $200,000 worth of damage.

A witness sent video of the man standing naked on top of one car waving a UH flag. The flag was later found stuck into a shattered windshield.

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Mannatech
Sam Caster, former chairman and CEO of Mannatech, now consults for the company.

Dave Lieber

The smiling face of Samuel L. Caster, one of Texas’ top multilevel-marketing salesmen, is well known by the Texas attorney general’s office. Three times the state’s highest law enforcement officer has tangled with Caster. Three times Caster has been pushed down and out. But the Coppell businessman always manages to pop back up.

Like the nutritional and dietary pills sold by Mannatech, the company he founded, and the thousands of sales associates in two dozen countries who believe in him, Caster is unstoppable.

His first run-in came in the late 1980s when Caster’s original company, Eagle Shield, sold a radiant barrier described as a breakthrough product that would cut energy costs.

The attorney general got a court order against the company on the grounds that the product was not new and energy savings were dubious. Caster agreed not to make future false statements, according to newspaper reports.

His second run-in came in 1991 when Caster’s company marketed Electracat, a device that repelled insects and other pests with high-frequency vibrations.

One assistant attorney general called the device “a hoax.” Caster agreed to stop selling the product and to refrain from making claims about products that were not supported by science. His company, Eagle Shield, paid $125,000 for investigation costs.

Caster’s third tangle with the AG was the most serious.

In 2007, Attorney General Greg Abbott sued Mannatech and Caster, claiming that sales associates made false claims about the healing powers of the company’s products. Abbott charged that sales pitches included false promises that the pills, described by one critic as “sugar pills,” could help cure cancer, Down syndrome and other serious illnesses.

Under the settlement reached two years later, the company paid $4 million in restitution to Texas customers and $2 million for investigation costs. Caster paid a $1 million civil penalty and promised, once again, not to engage in deceptive marketing practices by making exaggerated claims.

But this third strike was different. Caster also was banned from a company position for five years. That five-year period ends in February.

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North Texas is experiencing the most whooping cough cases since 2004, health officials said Monday.

As of Nov. 14, Dallas County reported 329 pertussis cases, said Zachary Thompson, director of county health and human services.

Tarrant County reported a larger outbreak with 601 cases as of Nov. 18. Denton County reported 229.

The disease was supposed to disappear after a vaccine was widely embraced in the 1950s.

The most recent vaccine, however, is not as strong as previous versions.

Dallas County issued its first pertussis alert this year in September when 215 whooping cough cases were reported. There were 220 cases all of last year.

Texas reported 3,187 cases as of last week, including three deaths. About 12 percent of the people required hospital care.

Dallas County officials sent out a second alert two weeks ago. They warned doctors to suspect pertussis when a patient has upper-respiratory symptoms and a cough that lingers for weeks.

“The best way to protect against pertussis is to get vaccinated,” said Dr. Christopher Perkins, the county’s medical director. “Adults and children need to stay current with their vaccination schedules.”

Government guidelines say children should get five shots administered with two other vaccines. The shots are given between the ages of 2 months and 6 years.

A sixth shot was added in 2005 for 10- to 18-year-olds. Adults also should get a booster shot.

Texas might be the reddest big state in the country, a place where the GOP has grown over two decades to hold every statewide office, both chambers of the Legislature and a majority of the state’s congressional delegation. But Fritsch sees storm clouds ahead.

“We are not speaking to the five demographics of people who are growing and vote and want their voice heard: women, single mothers, Latinos, blacks and young voters,” she says. “That is where this party loses.”

Fritsch, who is running for governor, is a former radio talk show host, author and occasional talking head on Fox News.

She is black, female and conservative — an outspoken Republican who says she was attracted to the GOP’s policies as the “best way to lift people out of dependency.”

More than anyone else in the race, Fritsch reflects the debate within the Texas GOP between those who want to hold on to the party’s immediate success and those who want to recalibrate the party’s appeal to broader constituencies, especially a growing number of Hispanic voters.

Fritsch trumpets her conservative credentials. She advocates fiscal restraint, supports the Second Amendment and opposes abortion and gay marriage. She is pro-business and says the proper role of government is to help people succeed, not “recycle people in poverty.”

She got her politics from her mother, who worked three jobs rather than take welfare and who once voted for Ronald Reagan and was thereby excluded from the extended family’s Thanksgiving dinner. “There’s a picture of us with a turkey and ice water,” Fritsch said.

Attorney General Greg Abbott is the favorite for the GOP gubernatorial nomination, a veteran politician with plenty of big-dollar donors and a favorite of the party’s far-right flank. Therein lies the problem, Fritsch says.

While the Democratic Party will have two women at the top of the ticket — Sens. Wendy Davis for governor and Leticia Van de Putte for lieutenant governor — the Texas GOP has become “the party of all these men and the same old recycled candidates,” Fritsch warned.

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HARLINGEN — Former state Rep. Jim Solis surrendered at noon Tuesday to a minimum-security prison camp in Arkansas to begin serving a sentence for bribery that begins a partial closure to his ordeal, his attorney said.

“He and his family still have a long way to go,” Solis’ attorney, retired Judge Robert Garza, said Tuesday.

Garza said Solis’ wife dropped him off at the Forrest City Low Satellite Camp Prison, about 85 miles east of Little Rock, to begin serving a 47-month sentence.

U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen sentenced Solis on Aug. 2, more than two years after the ex-representative, a Harlingen Democrat, pleaded guilty on April 29, 2011, to assisting in ex-404th state District Judge Abel C. Limas’ racketeering scheme.

“He’s going to have to pay the price. He has been paying the price and his family has been paying the price,” Garza said of the consequences of Solis’ involvement in Limas’ racketeering scheme.

“I believe that he and his family have been through absolute hell,” Garza said. “It has not been easy.”

The attorney added that Solis has taken responsibility for his actions. Garza also reflected on how Limas ruined so many lives.

“This one person was able to take down all these people. It was wrong, but, it was also their choice,” Garza said of Solis and other defendants.

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In an aggressive move designed to crack down on free-spending outside political groups, the Obama administration is proposing strict new rules curtailing nonprofits like Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS and the pro-Obama Priorities USA.

The draft proposal, released Tuesday by the Treasury Department, would keep so-called social welfare 501(c)(4) nonprofits from getting a tax exemption if they engage in too much “candidate related” political activity.

The groups were at the heart of this summer’s scandal over Internal Revenue Service targeting of tea party and other conservative groups seeking tax exemptions.

The proposal is the first major response to a Treasury inspector general report in May blasting the IRS for added scrutiny of tea party conservative groups seeking tax exemption — a major scandal that led President Barack Obama to fire the acting IRS commissioner and other officials to exit the agency.

The inspector general report recommended the IRS tighten its rules.

The new regulations would affect a broad swath of political nonprofit groups that have come to play an outsized and influential role in federal elections.

Crossroads, founded by George W. Bush adviser Rove, along with its sister super PAC together spent $325 million in 2011 and 2012 against Obama and Senate Democrats. Priorities, set up by former Obama aide Bill

Nearly 30,000 Texans were among more than 610,000 Americans who were homeless this year, according to a report released this month by the U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Texas was among the states with the largest decreases in the homeless population, according to the report. The state saw a 13 percent decrease since 2012 and a nearly 26 percent decrease since 2007. Still, Texas was one of five states that together accounted for more than half of the homeless people in the country. The others were California, New York, Florida and Massachusetts.

Nationally, homelessness has declined in recent years, according to the 2013 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress, which examined the homeless population on a single night in January 2013. About a quarter of the homeless people across the country were children. About 12 percent of homeless… Continued here: http://www.texastribune.org/2013/11/27/texas-homeless-population-declines/